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Tuesday, March 7, 2017

That was Fun - Not!!!

I started out the day with a relatively short list of things to get done and crossed most of them off within an hour. It all went sideways on the last item.

I arrived at the nearest corporate AT&T store two minutes after they opened in search of a ZTE Mobley. The Mobley is designed to plug into the computer port in a car or truck and creates a WiFi hotspot for up to five devices. The whole concept has never interested me until this past week when AT&T introduced an unlimited* data plan for the Mobley at $20 per month. Since I retired, our connectivity has been based on a 20 gig Verizon plan and a 5 gig AT&T plan. That's been enough although some months it gets pretty snug, especially if the phones do a lot of software updates.

Anywho, it seemed simple - just get a Mobley with the appropriate plan. I'd tried to order via their website but the new plan didn't show as an option.

I already had the exact name of the plan so I figured it would be easy to do face to face. At store one, they didn't have a Mobley and in fact I had to brief them on their product. They did look up the plan and said I had to call Customer Service. I went over and sat down in the corner of the store and called Customer Service and waited the requisite ten minutes before talking to someone who also didn't know their products but eventually said he could give me a direct number for the Connected Car department but he couldn't transfer me.

The call to the "direct line" also resulted in wait time before being informed that the number connected to the "On Star" department. Since the truck has a ram symbol on the hood, GM's On Star wasn't going to do me any good.

At that point I drove to AT&T corporate store number two. They too couldn't do anything with or about the Mobley but they did look up the plan and gave me the corporate product code for the new plan that I wanted. With that info in hand it was back to the computer where I started an order for the Mobley AND a chat session to try to get it sorted out.

The first chat agent tried to get me to buy a different plan that would have cost seven times as much, in spite of having provided her with the corporate SKU code for the plan I wanted. She transferred me to another agent who never showed up. One hour of chat time down, one reading comprehension challenged agent and one non-existent agent later I cancelled the session and started over.

The second session started with a very helpful person who said I would need to order the device and the limited data option that they offer on line and then she would transfer me to a different department to get the wrong plan switched. One hour into the second session I started putting current time notes in the conversation since I'd learned that the transcript didn't include times. Seventy five minutes after the fifth agent said it would be just a couple minutes, I have a Mobley on order without ANY data plan. When the hardware shows up I'll start jumping through hoops again.

I continue to be amazed that outfits can stay in business providing that sort of service, but maybe the four hours and 50 minutes invested so far will be worth it - we'll just have to wait and see.

3 comments:

When they're one of only two companies, providing 90% of the services, they know they have a captive customer base and really don't care that their "customer services folks" have no training whatsoever on what they're supposed to be selling. I'm ashamed to admit that I retired from the "new ATT". Glad you were able to order the device without a plan, as getting one changed after the fact could become another nightmare... Good Luck...jc